Temporis Et Spatii
by Kardiaspark
Summary: Cora is a very plain muggle from the 1880's, unaware of the existence of magic. Draco stumbles in drunk and offers to fly her away across time and space. There are things he's not telling her, though; dark secrets he's trying to outrun. / All fixed! Please feel free to leave a review! :)
1. Chapter 1

"Temporis Et Spatii"

PART 1.

CHAPTER 1.

I never loved any other man than Draco Malfoy, crystalline ice castle whose drawbridge had inexplicably fallen for me. He was a fairytale in my arid desert where nothing grew, a live brook sparkling this dry mining town, a noble creature among the brash savages who staggered about its hastily edificed lumber; and Draco, my closest and dearest Draco, was going to die at sundown.

"Oh, you are _not_!" I threw a dishrag at him, which he dodged. My things were dirty and worn and decidedly inelegant, but he never seemed to mind.

"I am," he countered matter-of-factly, but a grin spread across his face like a bad poker hand. He closed the whining front door behind him and, golden sun speckles falling down his face like stars, crossed the room with a beckoning hand outstretched. "Cora. Fly away with me. Don't make your supper; Let's just go." His accent, intentionally or otherwise, swept me away on melodic piano arias.

"Draco," I laughed, turning from the hypnotic violet oils existing everywhere at once and blushing. "Draco, this is my home. This is all I've ever -"

He cupped my jaw, tenderly beseeching me look upon his snowstorm eyes and embrace the whiteout. "Cora Lucindra," he whispered. "May I take you across time and space?"

I found myself transfixed by him, pallid skin of his princely face, lips pink with good hydration parted ever so slightly. I would honestly go anywhere with this man, surely he knew it by now; but this strange jest was missing its mark. Moreover, it was a particularly peculiar thing to get the notion to melt across an Arizona summer and barge into someone's home. Then, a might late, I smelled the brutal cloud of whiskey. "Draco," I answered quietly, reaching to rest my hand upon his. It was the first time he'd ever touched me in this manner; Even in his state, I was reluctant to pull away. "It's ten in the morning."

"If I kiss you, Cora," he exhaled, leaning his forehead into mine.

My heart pounded. In the distance, a coyote called out to the sky. We suspended in the sun-dappled ashwood shack, hot firewater combusting mauve from his every breath, and I swore there was no time or space. "... I might let you."

I expected his response to be urgent - formidably, passionately clawing me to shreds - but it wasn't. Instead, his fingers fell to my chin and drifted me just close enough to feel his lips. His soft, full lips. A single firework exploded to the furthest reaches of my body.

"I have to go, Cora Lucindra of 1889 Garnet, Arizona."

Even elevated, I couldn't help snorting. "You're not going anywhere in this condition, Draco Malfoy of 1887 London, England."

He hadn't moved, lips brushing mine as he stammered, "I-if I stay, I might … not respect you."

Oh.

 _Oh_.

My corset was suddenly strangling me. All these layers - all these humid cotton layers - spontaneously conspiring to constrict my lungs and plume faint smoke over my brain - I needed to sit down.

"Cora, are you all right?"

My knees had given out and I nearly found myself splayed on the floor, but he caught my wrists just in time. I exhaled myself back to composure. "Yes. I apologize. This dodgasted corset is just too tight."

He glanced down. "Well, how fat _are_ you?"

I launched a backhand clear across his face. "I am not going to respond to that!" I huffed. "Just get to bed and rest. Before I change my mind and let you soil your good name out there!"

The gall of this man. He was laughing, draping his hands over my shoulders. "Cora, Cora! I'm sorry. I couldn't resist. I'm sorry."

This shouldn't have diffused me, I know, but it did. I sighed. "What are you doin' larkin' in the middle of the day anyhow? You're not one of those greasy hogs in town; You're Draco Malfoy; You have education, gentility."

He snickered, tucking a wayward copper hair behind my ear. "Well. That is very kind of you to say, but I'm afraid I'm not as _gentile_ as you think."

"Because you're three sheets to the wind."

"Because I would like to help you out of your very loose corset." His eyes glinted the partial sunlight like a stained-glass window. "And I might be a little hexed, yes."

I turned abruptly, crossing the shack to its only other door, the bedroom.

"Ah, Cora, don't be like that -"

"Draco," I declared firmly, "I'm not letting you do this. Not like this."

He groaned and lumbered up, but only far enough to stand before me again, a blanched Adonis swaying in a whiskey wind. "Cora. Please. I love you."

My breath spiked sharply. If he was genuine, I couldn't be liberated from my buttons and hooks fast enough; If he wasn't, it was a knife twisting my guts. "Go to bed, Draco," I grumbled.


	2. Chapter 2

"Temporis Et Spatii"

CHAPTER 2.

The swelter ascended twenty degrees at any threshold of sun, so I couldn't cool this commotion with a walk. Instead, I sat in my austere rocking chair and - with a furtive glance at the bedroom door, which stood closed and uneventful - hiked my skirts up to my knees. Sewing was an infallible virtue, always a steadfast reravelling of the hours, of the brain. I picked up Mrs. Marigold's snagged turquoise daydress, my needle, and every last fiber in me capable of exiling Draco Malfoy from my head.

Mrs. Marigold. Town gossip; likely peeping through her curtains at this scandalous spectacle of the rich recluse from up the hill careening right on through that spinster's front door. Though I couldn't disagree that one's business ought to be conducted with some measure of tact, I say, let 'em talk. I hadn't the need for friends or anything more than needle-and-thread customers since consumption took Ma and Pa anyhow.

But then, six months later, Draco appeared like lightning cleaving the sky in half. Sunday, July 17th, 1887, smoldering and bright as the surface of the sun; I'll never forget the day as long as I live. He showed up here unexpectedly - much like today - shivering under pounds of his sopping wet clothes. I gave him a blanket and tea and he insisted he didn't need more. In a day his grand estate was built by what could only be imported hires (who could never actually be observed) and just as quickly became his ivory tower: He seemed to prefer no company but mine. We were rather alike in that way, and it proved a brilliant foundation on which to build a friendship. I didn't mind his mysteries, and he didn't mind my plainness. We complemented each other.

Presently, the bedroom door creaked open. I slung Mrs. Marigold's dress on my other rocker and was on my feet, dropping my skirts to protect my modesty.

Draco didn't notice, emerging sluggishly and sitting at the small meal table against the front wall, face slumping to his hands. "I'm sorry for coming here, Cora."

"How do you feel?" I asked. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by his hands reaching for mine (an hour's siesta was simply insufficient to expel alcohol from the body) but my keenness to give them.

"Like shit."

My eyes enlarged.

"Sorry," he groaned. "I'm still drunk."

"You don't normally indulge in drink." My thumbs pawed at his gingerly. "I'm your best friend, Draco. You know you can tell me anything."

He shook his head hard, eyes straining up at me. His voice cracked uncharacteristically. "I … can't. Everything will change."

"Is it the same amount that would change if we made love?" I hadn't meant it to be a blade edge.

Hands and entire countenance swiped from me defensively, smeared his fingertips into his eyes.

I escaped elsewhere as well and found an errantly upturned floor plank upon which I could fixate. My tongue emerged a flummoxed, startled animal. "I've never … known a man's touch," I confessed, blooming fervid scarlet. "I wouldn't … I wouldn't know what to …"

"Cora, it's okay."

"One article for each answer." Outpacing my apprehension, I swiftly unfastened every button down the front of my sepia overshirt, peeled off each arm, and clapped it on the table. Draco surveyed the sequence of it with leaden eyes, but I brazened forward, exposing my worn silk corset and the cotton underslip my breasts filled above it. He could see me now - my shoulders, my narrow freckled arms, my risen bosom. My heart pummeled my ribs. "Why are you going to die at sundown?" I demanded.

" _Oh_!" His guffaw flayed the air unexpectedly. "That's what they say in old west movies. That part was a joke."

"They say in What West What?"

He shook his head. "Nevermind. Nothing. I'm not going to die."

I studied him for a moment. I had read about visitors from the stars, and this wasn't the first time he'd said something that sounded completely of another world. That was fiction, though; My corset was a tangible verity, and it drew free from the bottom.

"Cora, wait." He lurched forward to take my hand just as my ribcage liberated. "You don't have to do this. I'll talk to you."

I pursed my lips and blinked. "I don't mean to be meddlesome. I only want to help."

"I know." He dug his free hand into his pocket and thumped an exotic branch on the table. Rather, an opulently carved hawthorn rod. Or perhaps an ornate rail from one of his banisters? It captivated my imagination as he reluctantly looked on.

"I'm being hunted," he announced flatly.

"So you greased your holler?"

His icy eyes averted. "Do you have anymore, by the way?"

I swallowed, daring to slide a finger up the bewitching russet shaft. "Isn't that a might ill-advised?"

"They don't know where I am," he explained, "yet. They only know the era and region."

I blinked quizzically. "Era?"

He sighed. His crystalline gaze slithered through every window, reaching, it seemed, to the furthest corners of the territory. Then he squeezed my hand, heaved forward and looked me dead in the eyes: "I'm from the year 2005. You live in a region and era we now call the wild west. I'm a wizard - that is my wand - I was accused of a crime I didn't commit, and I am drinking because all of this means I have to leave you."

I sat there incredulously as his eyes darted earnestly between mine. Was he serious? Draco wasn't typically wont to be disingenuous, yet here he was, gunning down my intelligence like a rabid dog in a field. "How long were you wandering in the heat?" I erupted from my chair and spread distance between us. "I suppose you don't have to tell me, Draco, but I'd appreciate you not spinnin' fine, all-to-pieces webs around me."

He sneered, but retrieved his wand in no particular hurry. "Accio Cora," he commanded.

Something ferociously unseen blasted me back the way I came, barreling me into Draco's ready arms with a shrill clamor. I rained frightened limbs upon him. "Go back to Hell, Demon! Go back to hell across lots!"

"No no no, Cora, it's okay," he pleaded, restraining me as I bucked. "Cora, it's not evil. It's okay."

He kept me with a steadfast strength surprising for a rail of a man, effectively smothering my efforts. I twisted to face him. Ethereal violet oil enraptured dust flecks, riding the guilden rays between us, and evaporated to barren desert air. In its wake, the memory of his lips breezed over mine. "This is me," he soothed.

Inflicting my knee upon his gut, I sprang for the front door, but halted at a disturbance in the knob.

"Accio Cora!" familiarly whisked me to his embrace.

"Bombarda!" he bellowed, and I cried out again when my door detonated to the back wall, inviting in a deliverance of blinding sun. This time, I walloped Draco where a man is not to be assailed, seized the wand from his booze-dulled grasp, and made for freedom. When I saw the intruder staggering to their feet, I took aim.

"CORA! NO!"

"BOM - _**BAR**_ \- DUH!"


	3. Chapter 3

"Temporis Et Spatii"

CHAPTER 3.

The late hour lamented an alluvion of southwestern sky upon me. Vermilion inflamed a canyon through my thigh, brimstone pulsated tender cliffaces, and amethyst brooded a slow blade to the bone. Palatially arched marble ceiling materialized overhead, excruciatingly muting them. A spray of authentic emerald coned from the bottom of the staircase, glistening in defeat to my shoulder. I snatched the flutter over my leg.

Draco closed his hand over mine. "I haven't touched you. I promise. Don't worry; I destroyed the portkey."

"Portke - What are you doing?" I exclaimed, flailing panicked arms at him. "Get your mitts off me!"

His hands withdrew open-faced. "I'm sorry. I know, this is very disconcerting for you."

"Disconcerting!" I labored up with a grunt and my eye caught the wand like a red hand. "What are you doing with that - that _thing_!"

He raised a firm palm to my shoulder, countering my protesting might. "I'm not very good at healing spells, so please lay back."

"Blood -" I stammered. "I'm bleeding -"

"You _were_ bleeding, when the beam fell on you. Deletrius."

Wine-dark dribble ascended to extinguishment until the grisly splash was no more. I outstretched for a bead, dewy and real on my skin, and it disintegrated to passive sunlight.

He met my eyes with a smirk. "I know I shouldn't say it, but the view up here is _paradise_. Considering."

I rose indignantly, but he bore me back down. "Hellfire, Draco Malfoy, I don't like you drunk."

"I'm not as drunk anymore."

My insides wrenched to the open air, fissuring my breath, and his hand urgently arrived in view. I refused, regarding the ceiling's immaculate alabaster streaked with flowing umbers until his offer left. If he'd slipped, I didn't want to know. "Two years you've secluded yourself in here, only visiting me and only on occasion. Wouldn't it have been less troublesome to just cut and run today? Rather than try to collect a passenger?"

He frowned, delicately pursuing the shape of the wound with his instrument. "All my life I've been more or less alone," he confessed, "and it was fine. But then I made a friend. And now, I dunno, I s'pose I don't want to be alone anymore."

"Reckon you _are_ still drunk," I grimaced.

"I'm just being honest with you. If I lose you, at least I can say I tried. Stay still; I'm almost done."

I obliged. The ceiling remained unchanged.

"Say to whom?"

"It's colloquial."

"What does it do?" I asked, watching him work as best I could from this vantage point. "The wand."

"Almost anything, good and bad." He flashed frost at me. "I'm afraid I'm not as practiced at the good things."

This time, I accepted his offer. He pulled me upright to show me the broad, furrowed scar crossing my thigh. The wand, unfeasibly, had healed me. Draco had healed me. A violet cumulus resuscitated and fell away.

His demeanor solidified inquisitively as I descended his hand. "You're an intoxicant, Draco Malfoy; I hope you know that."

A man's fingers effervesce readily up crumpled drawers, I discovered. He investigated my expression - entreating him - before dispatching like an arrow past his surprise straight to my lips. Here was the appetite I had anticipated earlier. Anchoring to my hip, he ensnared me in his humid mouth, famished for the taste of me, his tongue glissading down my neck, my collarbone, the lace slope conserving my bosom.

Being mounted stole the oxygen from my lungs. He pried at my corset, but found his advancement precluded by more hooks on the side.

"So many buttons and layers," he flustered. "How do you get dressed?"

I chortled, disengaging them with ease. "This is less than usual. I wasn't expecting a visitor today."

It was scarcely over my head when he seized my wrists, pinning me to the sleek marble, and imbibed my whole mouth, pausing to suckle my bottom lip and clamp it in his teeth. My brain was raw batter by the time he cupped my head in his hands with an affectionate peck.

"I hope it doesn't put you off," he murmured into my mouth, "but I love your eyes. The way they change in different lights. Of all the coordinates in all the ages in history, I got to show up at your door and get lost in your green and blue and yellow eyes."

"Do you intend to debauch me, Draco Malfoy?" I could hardly speak the words.

Mild amusement sputtered his respiry. "I can assure you, Cora Lucindra, I have every depraved intention for you. I just want to savor this moment first."

So we luxuriated in his monumental foyer. His hair aureate with setting sun, glacier eyes avalanching through mine, balmy grazes peppering my neck and cheeks: The sum of them conspired to disarm me. I could follow this exquisite man anywhere.

"Shit!" He occluded himself awkwardly and retrieved his wand.

"Watch your tongue, would you?"

A stray shuffle amplified across endless opaline halls.

"This place is too conspicuous," he realized and took my hand, abruptly charging us down a corridor aggrandized with portraits of blondes from ages past.

"Well, why did you build a palace?"

"I - I don't know, okay?"

I confess I felt every bit the trollop, nary but my slip, drawers and skirt billowing in our wake as we cut through a bombastic dining hall, rounding a hawthorn table long enough to seat all of Congress, should such a dinner party ever be necessary. My neck craned to witness the lofty ceiling, its jade argyle mural centerpieced with an arresting serpent set to strike, before we rushed analogously carved double doors. We found ourselves in a rather peculiar kitchen, riotously abuzz with the preposterous iron-and-steam contraptions lining its walls and adjoined to a paneled room which accommodated another, less gregarious meal table. Draco guided me behind a central row of cupboards and silently bid me hush. Somewhere cavernously deep, a masculine voice reverberated to every realm of the house.

" _This_ is _an impressive conjuring, Malfoy. But it appears you could only use materials from this period_ , _couldn't you_?"

I jolted at an explosion in the next room. Draco bound me in a vigilant arm and drew his wand. "Apparate!" he whispered.

An entirely new room spontaneously surrounded us: a lavish bedroom - likely Draco's - of lush jade velvets surrounding an almighty oak bed intricately engraved with serpents. We clustered in a corner opposite the aberrantly ajar door, to which Draco spartanly steadied his wand.

" _You know_ , _it was a helluva trip trying to find you_ ," the voice buoyed humorously, its unidentifiable origin precipitating a terrifying omnipotence. " _It took me some time to realize you stole the Necronomicon. No worries; I'll get it back. And you_ , _fugitive_ , _will make me rich._ "

A crash resounded from a distant tower, and Draco flourished his wrist to place us in an oblong room with what appeared to be an altar at the far end. Above it, a stained-glass window depicting a skulled serpent blazed the room a florid ruby. A throng of candles ignited in succession to flank a direct aisle to the formidable onyx altar, upon which lay a scabrous leather book.

Draco mutely implored the contrary; I breached from him nonetheless, launched by the explicit instinct that this was the Necro-device. He accelerated after me.

"Cora -" he rasped as he seized my arm.

" _Maaaaaalfoy_ ," the voice sang directly beneath us. " _I can see your boots in the floorboards_."

I shrieked as we blasted airborne. A flick of Draco's wand shattered us through a glass stall to collide with stone tiles surrounding a drain.

"Cor - Are you okay?" He helped me to my feet and encircled his sable tailored coat over me, hastily beckoning my arms through. Another blow clobbered uproariously nearby. "Don't be scared, all right? The last time I cast this spell, I ended up in the old west."

"So you have no idea what's going to happen."

" _Come out_ , _come out_ , _wherever you are_!"

He elongated around the fractured glass and an adjacent mirror erupted to dazzling shards, from which he recoiled. "Right."

"So why are we doing this?"

He turned, exalted my face in both hands and gifted me with his lips, sparking a fuse at the exposed mouth of my nerve endings. "Because it's the only way out."

. . .

"Stop! Stop!" I screeched, propelling from him to swivel haphazardly and retch. "I can't take anymore of this 'appearing' sorcery!"

"Apparating," he corrected distractedly.

"I have no concern for what it's called. Draco, are you listening to me?" I stumbled back toward the obsidian-clad man ignoring the lashing winds. "We need to address your problem-solving skills!"

All around us, the pearly horizon surged and undulated as far as the eye could see. A single iridescent crystal cascaded from the sky, falling past the garnet trickle arriving beneath his sleeve. He shuddered, irises ghosts. "Do you believe in fate?"

I had never seen snow before.


	4. Chapter 4

"Temporis Et Spatii"

PART 2.

CHAPTER 4.

Most consternating about this spell was its headlong plunge into the unknown. It befit Draco in its impetuousness, vaulting our next bearings into place with precious little warning. Presently, imprecise cobblestone proliferated beneath our feet to bank down a hill toward an aggregation of buttery stone buildings looking out to a chaste cobalt ocean. A sinewy tree loomed chartreuse olives over us, and on approach was a simple wooden cart teetering on two large spindlewheels, driven by a sooty wool-cloaked man on a donkey. I glanced down at my coat pocket bearing the pressure of new weight and discovered the Necronomicon.

"The stealing hex," Draco murmured, steadfastly unmoved. "It'll stay with me until the hex is countered. Or ..."

"That's not going to happen."

Until the cart driver stopped to scrutinize us, I had been elated at the prospect of help.

"Yes?" I asked when he didn't speak, shielding my eyes from the unassailable sun.

Draco hacked blood onto his knuckle.

" _Leeches_!" the man squawked with unrestrained delight, rummaging the village of mottled tarps on his cart. "My dear boy, leeches are the cure for every ail! Three jaws! Tiny rows of teeth! They suckle all the demons from the body, they do!" He exalted a squirming jar triumphantly. "Would you like some? Only six shillings to save your life!"

His listless flourish landed effectively.

. . .

Sleek amber tiles incarnated beneath us, pine steepled above daffodil-swirled wallpaper, and a stone hearth arched to engorge the room. An amethyst-haired woman stood over a steaming iron pot bearing a wooden spoon, the latter clattering to the floor when Draco's slackened hip struck the table.

"Draco Malfoy!"

"Tonks," he answered anemically. "Lookin' good. Not a day over … however old you are."

I blinked, but entreated to Tonks, "Please, we need your help. I can't do spells."

"You can't - do -" She flashed dark eyes at me, then Draco. And peeled into laughter. "You and a muggle! What is she, Draco, sixteen?"

"I'm twenty-one," I ruffled. "What's a muggle?"

Nary more than a scuff of his boot announced Draco's avalanche to the floor.

I dove for him as Tonks rounded the table. "Hold him," she instructed. "Hold his arms. Diffindo!" His shirt halved cleanly. She parted the bituminous silks and faltered.

His head at my lap, biceps under my hands, I gasped at the flicker of glass crowning just above his left nipple, the dark tide still pulsing from it. His eyes writhed in a ghastly haze.

Tonks' gaze scrambled the room, but floundered, so she looked me straight in the eyes. "What is your name?"

"C-Cora."

"Okay, Cora," she counseled steadily. "I need you to hold him down as hard as you can - because he is not going to like this - but I need him perfectly still. Can you do that?"

A tremor rocked my whole body. My lungs tautly spurned air.

"Cora. Can you do that?"

I nodded fervently.

"Okay." She straddled him and pinched her bare fingers on the jagged crest. "It's cold," she whispered in amazement. I propped the whole of my fortitude over his arms.

Draco jolted with a howl, his limbs waging war against us, thrashing convulsions as the stake begrudgingly sludged from his body. I tried not to witness the pulpous sparkle burgeoning as it ascended. His barks and whimpers scalped the taciturn air.

No sooner did it clangor to the floor than Tonks retrieved her wand and, rigidly grimacing, pressed it to the cadent heart of the carnage and squealed an incantation. His vital molasses retreated back into the chasm, which resolutely closed as if never having been. She huffed and tumbled off him. I sat back, deflated. Draco coughed miserably.

"Pretty lucky of you to find me," she remarked. "Mind telling me what you're doing here?"

"What are _you_ doing here?" Draco retorted lazily.

Tonks' hair seethed burgundy, but she took in a breath and it diffused. "You first."

I intervened: "He can - _apparate_? - to random times in history."

"You don't mean … Temporis Et Spatii?"

"You know it?" I asked.

Her hair ignited again. "Merlin, Malfoy! What the hell are you thinking? That spell is very powerful and it is _not_ supposed to be random. Clearly, you can't handle it very well. I'm not surprised you got hurt." She turned to me and I shrank. "Does this boy not realize his actions affect outcomes?"

Draco rose to slump forward, face clustered in a scowl. "Don't _start_ with me, hothead."

She stood instead and returned to the hearth, muttering, " _Merlin's beard_ , _a Malfoy_. _Here_. _Of all places_." The cauldron clonked on the table. "I suppose you must be hungry. Here; I think I have enough."

Lumbering clammily, he arrived as the fractured bowl crossed the table. "I'm sorry," he conceded, arctic eyes finally shining open. "I do want to hear what brought you here."

Her eyes narrowed in scrutiny, fingers enclosing the iron handle. "I'm - running from my problems. But I at least have the guts to admit it." The globe scraped the whorled wood as she gestured toward a doorway, beyond which stairs ascended the same sprightly wallpaper. "You can wash up and rest on the sleeping porch. First door. Cora?"

She led me through a primly paneled sitting room, making a straight path behind two rosy armchairs observing an amber-cobbled fireplace and, cauldron swiveling from the crook of her elbow, swept open the wainscotted door. Sloping magnificently to the horizon, rows of halcyon periwinkle reclined beneath a lustrously billowing bronze sky. From the west, a mild sun incandesced the tawny wall of the house.

I thought of my mother. An Irishwoman fortified by quiet strength, she'd labored her final months wistful for her childhood farm. The simplicity of it, she recounted, the magic of a midwest sunset. Sky forever, she used to dream. If only she could see this.

Tonks upturned the cauldron and advanced to a steel chest against the house, hoisted the top of it. Within, rocky ice kept variegated food items.

"Please don't mind him," I appealed as she cast me an apple. "I reckon he's just astonished to be alive."

"So where do you come from, Cora?" She leaned against the chest, regarding only her gilt-stippled sanguine snack.

"1889 Arizona," I obliged. "I'm told it's the wild west."

"Well. Your bimbo boyfriend has whisked you to a lavender farm in 1713 France, so you may be in for a period of adjustment if you stay." She rotated her apple, as if ruminating where to bite first. "He's … good to you, right?"

"Draco isn't perfect," I granted, "but he's the single best thing that ever happened to me. I would accompany him to all the corners of creation if that's where he notioned to go." I couldn't restrain a small smile. "Helps that he smells nice, too."

"Have you ever heard of the Coronacurse?" Her opaque eyes startled me.

"No?"

"Nevermind." She shook her head. "That's good to hear. I was never close to him when I knew him, but it's good to hear he's at least got some manners."

I observed her curiously. "Why did you save his life if you don't like him?"

"Well - I mean - I don't want him to _die_ ," she flustered, hair tinging saffron. "I just don't want him barging in here out of nowhere and disrespecting me in my own kitchen. That stew was supposed to be my dinner, you know." She reevaluated me and sighed. "I know, this isn't your fault. I have a spare dress that should fit you. I was also intrigued to learn how you clean - if it's all right."

I laughed. It really wasn't that interesting.


	5. Chapter 5

"Temporis Et Spatii"

CHAPTER 5.

Glowing sapphire from a wall of pine shutters, Tonks' sleeping porch accommodated a scrolled iron bed, the acacia nightstands flanking it, and otherworldly underwater respiration. Draco ascended from the patchwork quilt, a lithe silhouette radiating celestial silver, and somberly drifted toward me, fingers swimming my waterfall marmalade locks, the freckle-splashed slope of my cheeks. My face sprouted roses as his lips buoyed mine.

"I intend to debauch you, Cora Lucindra."

Violets twirled the silken air. "I intend to let you."

His taste buds captured my whole mouth, voraciously inhaling my essence. Black lace slithered my shoulder and his teeth ensnared my neck. I gasped.

My dress slipped effortlessly over my head, and then I was just me - raw meat - all I had to give him. Heaving me by the haunches, he delivered me to the bed, butterflying down a wake of goosebumps to the apex of my femininity. Gleaming opalescent, the ace-high aguardiente unbridled a decadent suction upon my waking senses. My lungs upheaved.

"You have such a pretty pussy," he smirked, enclosing a parting kiss and standing. Nary but gliding slats kindled this lacteous sculpture of a man, whose unfastening trousers rippled an abominable famine in me. When he plunged to kiss me again, he adroitly took aim.

I mewled when he impaled me.

He spiked a stroke up my molten core, then paused to read me. I answered with fingers interweaving his glittering hair, drawing him back to my lips. "Fuck, Cora, you feel like fucking heaven," he purred as he bludgeoned me again. "Sorry," he hitched. "I mustn't say naughty words."

"I don't mind it so much." My thighs solicited him with an immodest squeeze.

Forehead affixed to mine, he surrendered another thrust, curling my fortuitous toes. And another. Scowling, jaw rigorously ajar, he accelerated, assailing me, laddering to the highest turrets of my consciousness. Our breath scaled the alchemical starlight, hot on each other's faces, utterly intoxicating. We culminated as one.

He deposited a kiss on my brow and rolled off. I floated the royal tide back to my mortal coil, washed ashore to the headboard with the golden siren who had just drowned me.

"That dress looked brilliant on you."

I rested upon his slender chest. "It's from 2010."

"The future," he mused as I tasted his creamy skin. Powdery flora hothoused my brain, danced away ephemeral.

"Your eyes," he marveled, lightly tucking my hair behind my ears. "A minute ago they were peridots. Now they're all fiery like yellow diamonds. In the snow, they glowed like moonstone. Everytime I look at you I'm opening a treasure vault."

My cheeks ignited. He wasn't an affront to vision himself, wintry gaze chilling everything its snowdrift captured; and me blithely eddying wherever the freeze took me. "Can we stay here?" I whispered.

He frowned, observing my face. I didn't know what I looked like. "I was hoping I might get things sorted and figure out how to take you back to my time. My family is very powerful; I can give you anything to your heart's desire." He stroked my hair, evanescing my senses. "Is there anything in all the world you desire, Cora Lucindra?"

I relished the swoop of his palm. "Well, I do miss sewing."

"You absolute Hufflepuff," he snickered. "That isn't what I meant."

"It's calming," I beamed as he rotated me to sprawl beneath him. "It makes sense to me."

His tongue engulfed my mouth. "I intend to get you pilot lessons. Planes are the nearest to magic muggles have built, and I want you to experience that."

I couldn't explain my adoration for the foreign language everyone spoke; It was a magic in itself, I reckon, a delightful inflection on what had been my decidedly plain life. His wand came to mind, its straightforward hawthorn neck and stark gunmetal handle. "What kind of magic are you good at?"

He frowned. "Destruction, mostly. Though I've never been very keen on it."

"Can you raise the dead?"

His weight shifted. "What's with the third degree?" he ruffled. "Supposedly it's in the Necronomicon, but I haven't found everything I need yet. Anyway, that's not a very pretty spell. A person is never the same when they return."

He had dismounted me. I sat up as well, chastised. This resplendent man was not a mine at which I could hurl an egotistical pickaxe. I endeavored, "Could I see a spell you like?"

Face downturned, his sullen icicles ascended the whole of the room to me. It was an arresting expression, one I couldn't entirely read. He retrieved his wand, curlicued at an obscure rumple against the wall.

"Avifors." Cyan lightning veined his bisected shirt, enfolded an evolution of corners to its heart, from which burst a crisp confetti of feathers. A snowy canary bristled, flitted its head toward the ceiling, and became a second plume lulling to the floorboards.

Slouched over the foot of the bed, his inscrutable smolder crumbled. "You don't - regret any of this, do you?"

"Draco Malfoy." I fluttered to him, earnestly entwined our fingers. "How can you not know? If I had to do this all over again, I would _invite_ you to turn up spiflicated and nearly faint me with your advances."

He snorted, parting my knees with his talented hands, kissed my scar. The hours waded supine, sparkling ivory crescendos up our dreams.


	6. Chapter 6

"Temporis Et Spatii"

CHAPTER 6.

"Seriously?" Tonks drove the door partway through our impeding clothes, surfacing us awake. She scarcely finished her statement before escaping. "Draco, you have a visitor, so … get dressed or whatever. Bloody animals."

We whirlwinded from the bed as Draco shouted at the door.

I did not feel dressed after the starless lace cleared my head, arabesque gossamer encircled my waist, nor inhabiting its baroquely swirled arms, but my corset now hung aloft a deserted margin of the universe. Draco was ready just as quickly, possessing as he did only boots, trousers and his indomitable, masterfully crafted coat. He seized my arm purposively, but rounded the bed instead. The window clanked when he struck it.

A rattle arrived at the doorknob. "I think I've got your style for this spell figured out," disclosed the voice from Draco's halls, escalating rather prematurely to whamming the door with his whole body. "You can't even cast it to its full scope. It's a shame you'll never see the Mars colony."

Draco's hands flipped at the air. "Again with this. I am not a bad wizard!"

"You're not a good man." The door abandoned its hinges and hurtled to the floor, unobstructing a sallow, carrot-haired stranger who simpered vaingloriously.

" _What is going on up there_?"

I accelerated backward as the man efficiently incantated at the book. The bed crowded between me and Draco; On it, though, the wand dutifully abided.

"Aw, Draco, did you make a friend?"

"She's got nothing to do with this, Percy." He cocked forward.

"Miss," Percy softened, beckoning me. "I'm very sorry, but this man is tricking you. Come with me; I can take you home."

I swiped the wand swift as a pistol and fired. "Bombarda!"

A spate of rust flared directly upward, cracking a beam from the ceiling. I shunted it, colliding with the nightstand, and Draco clambered over the bed to seize his weapon. "Never use my wand!" he pleaded, shimmering frenzied frost. "You must never, ever use my wand!"

"Do not break my things!"

Percy clasped his hands cordially. "Oh. Not to worry, Miss Tonks -"

"NO!" she screeched and clamped his ear in her nails, storming him down the stairs. "You will NOT bring this drama into my house. Go!" The door slammed like a thunderclap and she fusilladed across the small dwelling. "Draco Malfoy, get your ass down here!"

He took my hand and it was the most natural thing in the world. We descended to find her in the sitting room, stringently gesturing to a pewter wolf statue on the mantle, face fissuring in the breaching honey dawn. "This is a portkey. He'll probably see you in this light, but that's not my problem, is it?"

"Y-your face …" I winced.

A convulsion throttled Tonks, flickering the pigment from her locks and knocking her jaw loose. She cupped it in distress, the landscape of her countenance ulcering to cardinal scallops and falling. "This was supposed to be my sanctuary!" she clacked ferally.

"Flipendo!" She overbalanced into the air and clefted the wall, permitting Draco enough time to sprint me across the room.

"What is this voodoo?" I gasped. "What is happening to her?"

Tonks sucked in air, regarded her aberrant arm dismally. "This is no life," she shivered. "So cold. I'm … so cold ..."

Her knotted pine plunged from our feet and we galed beyond any color, cycloning weightless. Draco released the stately figurine and we were barreling toward the earth through my terrified wailing.

Solid ground arrived a relief. The stars canopied to deific gold massacring from the east. "Are we not going to help her?!" I huffed deliriously as Draco hoisted me upright. And then I saw him - truly saw my closest and dearest Draco - face contorted in unadulterated terror. He had no answers, no comfort to bolster me.

"Expelliarmus!" His wand sailed over the violaceous slope, and he made no hesitation to launch for it.

" _Face_ me, you coward!"

Draco's desperate flurry fell short when Percy wrenched him about-face, savagely spindly, and bore his aspen weapon up his adversary's jowl. The amaranthine procession yawned to the horizon, fluttering fondly to the hemorrhaging sky.

Draco swallowed. "Why are you doing this? You've got your precious book."

"It isn't just the bloody book and you know it."

Already on advance to Draco's wand, I hastened my bare heels to their absolute zenith, heaps of dress bundled in blanched knuckles.

"How many times," Draco glowered as the corkscrew-embellished lance dimpled his throat, "do you need to hear that I never laid a hand on your wife?"

"You were the last person seen with her!" Percy sputtered, amplifying in anguish. "I did nothing but weep for months. My life hasn't moved forward. I changed, Malfoy." His eyes flashed rabidly. "Do you have the faintest idea what that's like?"

Draco had deflated, peering down his upended chin at a man uninhabited by the things which amass a human soul. "I swear to you, Percy … I didn't do it."

My feet scarcely arrested their momentum. The two men observed the wand focused nary inches from their faces.

Percy snickered. "You don't know how to use it."

"I know the whereabouts of your brain matter."

He released his grasp on Draco and regarded me hellishly. "You want to play with the boys, little harlot?" Slate gaze glimmering cutlasses through the ambrosia twilight, he elevated his wand.

"Imperio!"

But his weapon was already in flight as Draco's ambush uprooted him to the ground. Unabated, Percy scrambled for his armament.

I dove to Draco's side, wand outstretched. "Do it!"

"Temporis Et Spatii!"

. . .

Drumfire sprayed overhead as a metal cage enclosed around us, surveying a viridescently thicketed horizon below, roping smoke crisscrossing past our heads. An adolescent man, seated before a miscellany of clocks and dials, twisted to us with bloodbath-smattered pupils. "Fucking gooks!"

His revolver stared me down and exploded, spearing my eye asunder.

"AVADA KEDAVRA!" pirouetted us to the kaleidoscoping leaves of the earth.

I had never seen so many trees.


	7. Epilogue

"Temporis Et Spatii"

EPILOGUE.

Draco spooled sidelong to into an armoire, crashing its contents. Upward exertion found his legs to lack any integrity, but it didn't matter anyway. It was no use trying to amount to anything other than the human larva he was; He melted to gelatinous pulp, soused inexorably with blubbering intonations. The popcorn ceiling stared back at him, pimpled and callous and the sky deluged beyond it and he didn't care.

"Oh, it's you." Thunder rumbled overhead. "Nice of you to return my property. I was wondering when you'd turn up for it."

He may not have engaged if he hadn't recognized this voice as his singular salvation. His muscles fortified what his bones had disinherited, rising him arduously to his feet. He hadn't, however, expected to witness cloudy hair wisping over a merlot armchair. The library illumined with a clatter, studded with arched windows between bookcases. "I didn't return it; It was taken from me," he sneered. "I need the counterspell for the Coronacurse."

She turned to investigate him and he awed at the ravines each year had knived from her countenance. The plucky seventeen-year-old he once knew now sat before him a tired, canyoned old woman. She frowned, assembling a web of her chin. "I'm afraid there isn't one."

The lambaste upon the windows surged passionately. He charged for her. "Don't you toy with me, Granger!"

"What? Is it so uncomfortable having a soul?"

His wand landed square in her mudblood face. "Your stupid jinx made me _care_ about a muggle. I hate muggles! And now an innocent girl I had no business knowing in the first place is dead! You don't know what fresh hell I've been through. Undo the curse!"

She turned to face him, cavalier as the young girl who had slugged him in the nose those many eons ago. " _I_ didn't do any of this, Draco! You clearly took it upon yourself to cast it. Far as I'm concerned, you deserve everything that -"

"COUNTER THE CURSE, GRANGER!" The sky exploded, percussing the walls anarchically.

She sighed. "I do know of a spell that will revert you back to the day you stole my book. But," she enunciated, "if I do this, none of what happened as a result of this curse will have transpired. You won't remember any of it, and you may feel some piece of you missing that you can never define or replace. Are you sure - are you absolutely sure, Draco Malfoy - that this is what you want to do?"

His breath rattled ragged. Anything. Absolutely, unequivocally anything that would exonerate Cora from ever having met him. "Yes," he hissed.

"Very well." She pushed herself languorously to stand and centered her wand to his chest. Her gaze downcast. "I am sorry that this happened to you."

He closed his eyes as a final sob racked his body.

. . .

The sky blustered ashen as Draco elapsed woozily into the Knockturn Alley shop. A raven-haired woman, obscured by a rather formal veil, approached the front counter. "Headache potion, please."

"Ms. Weasley." The clerk eyeballed their company and leaned closer to her. "I should inform you the recipe has changed in this batch. I'm afraid I can't guarantee its quality."

She considered it a moment, but waved her fingers. "Thank you; I'll be careful."

He nodded and rounded behind a bookcase. The woman shifted her weight and glimpsed Draco in the outskirt of her eye. He returned a glare. When the clerk returned, she paid and left demurely.

"Mr. Malfoy," the man remonstrated. "Fine day seeing you after that wands-blazing, high-noon shootout you brought into my shop last time. I hope you know you destroyed my wormwood stock and now I have to wait for the next shipment."

Draco surveyed the establishment haughtily. "Seems you're getting on fine. I've come to reimburse the damages since I'm a swell guy."

But something ensnared his eyes: A pockmarked leather book overturing an inflection only Draco could know, coiling serpentine around his bruising marrow and squeezing.

"Fascinating, isn't it?" the clerk remarked mildly. "It is said every wizard who uses it meets a terrible fate."

"How much?"

"Oh." The man shook his head. "I'm sorry. Its author, Hermione Granger, is on her way to take it to an undisclosed location."

"I don't believe you heard me. I asked you how much." His fingers closed over his pocket, where his wand waited.

The man responded in kind. "I'm sorry, Mr. Malfoy," he reiterated sharply. "I'm afraid it's not for sale."

" _Ohhhhh_!" Draco clamped his forehead and unshackled a moan to its most despondent cusp. "You know, I think I'll take some of that headache serum."

"Cranium Quiet." The clerk narrowed his eyes, but embarked.

Expediently, Draco drew his wand and whispered to the book. Seaweedlike mist snarled and coursed to it, puffing on impact. When he heard a clink behind the bookcase, he scurried to resheathe his instrument.

"Doses are to be small," the shopkeep instructed, returning rather more quickly than before. "It's usually safe."

Upon rounding the corner to the main thoroughfare, Draco released his fingers, hearing the useless syrup smash as he disappeared into the throng.


End file.
